is this going affect us?

[DanWeiss]

While I think the idea of a wind farm is great, I find it necessary to point out the high cost of the energy. Remember that peak usage is in the summer, but that is the time of low wind speed in the Sound. Energy prices follow, simplistically, the supply versus demand model as modified by the commodification of the energy market.

A KwH of energy generated by Cape Wind will be hugely expensive compared to any other generation source currently supplying the grid. A new DC line set is being constructed in VT to take excess Canadian hydro power and send it down to New England. This energy is nearly perfectly green because no new environmental damage will be created to supply this power (other than running the lines). It also is dirt cheap.

New England has some of the cleanest generators around, but also one of the worst in Fall River. If Cape Wind were required to be built and operate without government subsidy, it would never get off the ground because it could never provide reasonably priced power. The turbines might spin in the cooler months, but who would ever buy power at 15 - 20 times the cost of existing generation methods with excess capacity?

Of course, New England ISO and National Grid are forced into a dilemma of accepting prices that are currently disallowed under utility pricing law and loosing the benefit of lower pricing from all the existing generators. What likely will happen is that New England ISO creates a pricing exception for Cape Wind.

If the turbine field ever gets built, I do hope it's environmental impact is negligible because the regressive tax it creates, perhaps $80/year in generation and transmission costs on one's power bill regardless of power used.

We will all pay for the apparent social good, but I'm not at all sure how much green power we will use from that turbine field.

[WaterKook]

So it's all about getting the cheapest on everything all the time?
Some times you have to pay more to get something better. How cheap is cancer treatment? Anyone? Save upfront pay in the end.
F- those babbies would be pumping out the power today!!!!

[outcast]

So:
Nuke Power = Warmer water Vs.

Blade Power which will keep the kiters away

It's all good to me.....

But I ain't asking my brother to go back to Iraq to get me another bucket of oil......

Unpack your stuff JE and get thee to Corp by 4

[iceratz@comcast.net]

The cost per kW hour may go up in comparison to what we pay now for oil, gas & coal. Those utilities have climbed a steady rate where currently 2x times what they were 10 years ago.
Cape Wind has laid out a plan that shows those current resource rates climbing at the same increased rate, while the wind farm levels off in delivery costs in about 5 -8 years.
Oil & gas will continue to exceed in costs at that point making the wind farm a productive alternative.

Heck, you need to drive your car for that long before it finally gives you financial returns as well.

[ron.c]

go Cape Codders

It's cranking

me - kid care instead

RC

[DanWeiss]

I think you guys misunderstand my post and where I stand on this issue. A close friend is an energy trader and largely "owns" half of all the production in the Northeast. He explained it to me this way. He buys futures of Kw not yet generated based on what he believes the demand will be, what the market cost will be, and the price he can lock today in order to later buy it and resell it at a higher price to a high demand market. Nothing more than pork belly or orange juice trading.

If Cape Wind cannot sell him power at a certain rate, he simply won't buy it. If he and others won't pay the very high rate that Cape Wind must use to make any money, nobody will be using electrons generated by Cape Wind no matter how terrific the environmental appeal might be.

The only time Cape Wind power would be appealing is on a hot, breezy summer day to supplement inland consumption where the demand is so high that the market responds by pushing prices through the roof for more traditionally generated KwHs. Remember, the summer seabreeze cools the Cape, Islands, coastal SE MA and Boston. When the thermal sets up, and we go windsurfing, this part of the energy market demand literally cools down.

The value of Cape Wind isn't just in the numbers, and I appreciate that as much as anyone. But unless the price per KwH comes in line with the rest of the market, who is going to pay for the price delta? Maybe it will be spread across the entire grid and charged to each address. What I think will occur is far less broad. I believe the only people who will foot this bill are those in the Southeastern Mass Zone that contains some of the poorest counties in MA, including Dukes County, the poorest by far. The payment will come in the form of a flat generation and transmission fee increase on each month's power bill that is independent of amount of power used. In essence, the fee is a regressive tax on the poorest people in the Commonwealth who will pay this fee just for being hooked to the grid -even if Cape Wind never manages to sell a single KwH.

As an aside, National Grid is subject to restrictions on the contract price it may pay to generators. I'm told that Cape Wind prices are so high as to violate that contract price limit and contracting for that price will violate utility law. That's consistent with what the media reports as one of the many remaining issues: Negotiating with National Grid when the price is disallowed.

This is a link to the ISO real-time pricing by Zone. http://www.iso-ne.com/portal/jsp/lmpmap/Index.jsp

[flaherty]

To give you an idea of the size of this project


The John Hancock Tower officially named, Hancock Place and colloquially known as The Hancock, is a 60-story, 790-foot (241 m) skyscraper in Boston. The structure, the tallest in the city,

The turbines will be over half the height of the Hancock building


24 square miles

Manhattan is how many square miles? It is 22.96 square miles

[boardsurfr]

We definitely could have used better mixing yesterday. Way too gusty in Kalmus, except for 45 minutes of SW wind. Perhaps we should ask for some windmills on land to replace the vacation homes that obstruct the west wind

Dan's comparison to the cheapest available energy sources is misleading. The correct comparison is to the current highest cost production. If any excess capacity would exist, those would be the power plants that would be turned off. Numbers are much more favorable for wind energy in this case. It may still be higher, but only because other energy sources do not include costs from carbon dioxide, pollution, and (for nuclear energy) disposal (which requires thousands of years of guarding disposal sites).

The current trend in conventional energy generation is towards gas, since recent finds and technology improvements have increased available reserves dramatically. Gas produces about 2-fold less carbon dioxide than coal, and it is much better suited for peak demand generation. In other words, in combines very nicely with wind energy.

As for noise and wind disturbances: I was in Denmark last year, where they have very large wind farms similar to the proposed on at a great windsurf spot. They were visible from the shore, and actually quite nice to look at (that was at least the consensus for our 10+ person group). No noise from them despite onshore wind, they were maybe a couple of miles away; and nobody there was concerned about the wind farms "using up" the wind. Of course, wind farms are a lot more common in Denmark and Europe in general. Great job-producing growth industry, btw.

[DanWeiss]

[mrgybe]

I would expect that, for quite some time, government subsidies will bring the cost of wind generated power into line with traditional alternatives......those same types of subsidies allow ethanol to compete.